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I refer to our discovery and development of the conservation
of momentum. It was first derived (and still is in textbooks)
from Newton's laws of motion, a crucial premise being the
third law. With the discovery of the magnetic force between
moving charges, it was realized that there were forces that
did not obey Newton's third law. Surprisingly, this did not
invalidate our conservation of momentum conclusion - we
merely raised it to the level of an a-priori hypothesis, assigned
the missing momentum to the electromagnetic field, and
produced a consistent and testable model of particle interactions.
Nature's pedagogy may at times lead us to useful conclusions
through imperfect premises. After we find the imperfections,
we do the polishing; but we don't through out a useful baby
with the used bath water.